WELCOME to the Official Blog of the 2012 Master National Hunting Test, October 18-28, brought to you by the Retriever News and written by Tina Styan & Gwen Jones. We hope you enjoy these daily updates on the 2012 Master National, held this year in and around Demopolis, Alabama.

Links

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Day Nine of the Master National -- The Awards Ceremony

We got to the Forever Wild property after helping load up the MN Plates, Ribbons and such at Dave and Marty Kress' Property ... Kressland. What a beautiful place it was and many agreed that it was most convenient to these grounds as a Pre-National Training Site. After we got to the Cattle Ranch, we decided to check on Flight B. They had twenty four dogs left to run this morning at 11:30 am, so they are right in line for finishing up their test in time for the 2:00 pm Awards Ceremony. The wind was whipping around this morning as it was yesterday, but the difference was that the sun was beaming down, helping maintain a bearable temperature. The left-hand flyer became a more difficult mark as the area in which the birds fell became larger due to the windy gusts. The center bird also continued to be a troublesome mark. Mark Atwater's crew continued to take portaraits this morning and displayed a beautiful selection of canvases and commemorative books.

Well, we are as excited as you all are to see who the "Best of the Best" are and can't wait for the Awards Ceremony to begin. Many people are packing and readying their trucks for the drive home. Those on the Eastern seaboard may be driving a little faster as Hurricane Sandy is moving up the coast to hit who knows where... Best of Luck to Everyone and we will report the numbers back when we get them.

The Awards Ceremony began at around 3:00 pm. Many people had gathered at the "Headquarters" at the equipment shed and had been waiting patiently ... anxiously for the Awards Ceremony to begin. Joh Blackbird spoke and thanked all the Judges and Marshals for this event. He introduced Read Holland, the President of the Black Warrior Club to speak. They thanked Chris Smith from Forever Wild for all he has done and he congratulated all the handlers for their accomplishment.

Janet wood introduced Buck Shope to explain the Clayton Crawford Award and they presented it to Bill Mason the Head Groundskeeper here at the Cattle Ranch for his months of tireless work. Please enjoy the pictures that follow ... they should be worth "a thousand words!" ...